An Unlikely Career Change
Sean Carter was a lawyer. He studied at Harvard with Barack Obama and comfortably worked as in-house counsel for a California mortgage company. Then he realized he was bored and deciding to unexpectedly change jobs, he pursued his other passion: comedy.
“Every month I’d take the same eight mortgage agreements and change the names and dates. It was not exactly the hardest job in the world. It was not heavy lifting. I was just bored,” he said. “It wasn’t horrible. How could you hate it? I worked indoors. I could do it asleep. Most of the time I did.”
Now working as a full-time legal humorist, he finds his job to finally have some meaning. He travels the country giving talks on subjects ranging from legal ethics to stress management. The difference between what he does and what a comedian does, as he sees it, is that he says “important things in a funny way.” Ultimately, he hopes that his lectures at corporate gatherings and organization meetings will inspire others to quit their careers and go after their dreams.
Hi Bernard – It’s funny you wrote about this, because it seems like switching careers is a trend thats catching on (though with the recession, I’m not sure its on purpose anymore).
I wish I’d been more aware (or rather cognizant) of my options in life before I’d spent $250,000 on law school and spent 4 years as an associate.
A friend of mine (Pamela Skillings) has a book coming out called Escape from Corporate America, which is all about people who successfully switched jobs. I’m not sure if I’m doing the linking thing correctly but here it is – http://blog.escapefromcorporate.com
Mike
Comment by Mike Silverstein | March 16, 2008